Questions from My Students
Tomorrow will be the fifteenth consecutive graduation I have attended. To mark this occasion, I have decided to assemble a list of questions my students have asked me over the years–many of which I still get on a regular basis. None of these are fabricated, and have all been asked of me over the last decade and a half. I am sure there are others that have slipped down the memory hole, but these have stayed with me. I decided to present these in the form of poem. I hope you enjoy it.
Questions from My Students
Am I in this class?
Is Socrates still dead?
England’s on an island?
When did that happen?
Is that clock right?
What country is Africa in?
What country was Martin Luther King of?
Can I go to the bathroom real quick?
Is this going to be on the test?*
Wasn’t Columbus on the Mayflower?
Isn’t the pope Jewish?
That’s not due today, is it?
Did they have rivers and oceans in the 1830s?
Aren’t Iran and Iraq the same country?
Should I be writing this down?
Japanese people aren’t from China?
Isn’t President Obama a Muslim?
New Mexico isn’t in Mexico?
Alaska isn’t off the coast of Florida?
Then why did they put it there on the map?
Do we have to answer all of these questions?
*Asked during a test review
You might be happy to know I am preparing a follow-up entitled “Sarcastic Responses I Give My Students.” That will be for another time.
And for those of you expecting a new story, they will continue next time.
A Pregnant Pause, Part Three
Without Mark and Angela’s money, Darlene had to settle for what I can only describe as the hospital’s “economy birth” package. She was not allowed to give birth in the maternity ward, and instead had to share a room with a comatose 70-year-old man, whom I can only assume was waiting for Oliver Sacks to arrive with a Walkman. Most importantly, Darlene had no access to a new and expensive treatment called an “epidural.” She was going to have this baby as God intended—even a Caesarian section was only being contemplated as a last resort, given the cost of the procedure.
As she laid in the gurney, I tried to mentally calculate the size of her baby, and the approximate size I imagined it had to pass through to enter this world. There was no way, I thought, this was going to happen without a c-section. Darlene’s huge belly and tiny hips were simply not compatible. In order for this birth to happen naturally, it was going to have to violate the laws of physics. However, I shelved my doubts and trusted the medical professionals. My job was not to make that decision—my job was Lamaze coach. I had a certificate to prove it.
I held Darlene’s hand. I said positive words. I reminded her she wasn’t alone. I helped guide her through her breathing. And all of that worked splendidly—until the first strong contraction. Carol Burnett famously described labor pain as “grab your bottom lip and pull it over your head.” A friend of mine who has had two sons chose “try to imagine pushing a basketball out of your ass.” I suspect both of those metaphors are accurate, because I couldn’t imagine the strength in which Darlene suddenly squeezed my hand. My metaphor for how hard she was squeezing my hand? A mining truck filled with iron ore just parked on it.
I didn’t know what to do. The last thing I wanted was to let go of her hand—and given how strongly she was squeezing it, I doubt that was a genuine option. So, I turned away, bit my bottom lip, and tried to keep my eyes from watering. I wisely chose not to complain to Darlene that she was holding my hand “a little too tightly.” In spite of the fact that she was no doubt enduring the most excruciating pain she had ever encountered, this remarkable woman still had the presence of mind to turn to me and say “I’m sorry. Am I squeezing your hand too hard?” Chagrined, I lied: “Not at all. Squeeze it as much as you need to.” I’ve got another one.
Darlene squeezed, breathed, wailed, and pushed a while longer. I don’t recall exactly how long the labor was—but I have no doubt it felt much longer to Darlene. Pale, covered in perspiration, most of the color seemingly drained from all of her flesh, she wept and begged the doctor to do a c-section. Mary begged for him to do a c-section. The doctor looked as if he was about to agree, and then his eyes lit up: “Nope. This baby is coming. Now. Push!”
Darlene protested that she couldn’t push anymore, but I urged her, as kindly as I could, to continue. She gazed at the wall a moment, turned to Mary, and then finally back at me. She closed her eyes, and quivered with laughter. She shouted, “Whose stupid idea was this?” She giggled another few seconds, and we all exchanged looks of concern. She then somehow found the strength to keep pushing.
As the baby started to come, Darlene screamed, wept, and pushed all at the same time. Her voice hoarse with exhaustion, she turned to me and muttered. “Make sure its okay.” I nodded, trying to appear more confident than I actually was. Without relinquishing Darlene’s hand, I rose, and leaned to get a look at this new life entering the world. I gasped, not so much at the sight of this miracle, but the sight of how parts of Darlene’s anatomy were…stretching. I mean really, really stretching. Oh my God! What the–? How–? That’s not possible! I quickly shrank back into my seat, and patted her hand.
“How does it look?” Her voice was softer than a whisper.
“Fine. Fine! It looks fine! Perfectly normal!” Certainly nothing happening that violates the laws of physics. “Push!” I’m still not sure if I was trying to persuade myself or Darlene, but there was one thing I was certain of: women are far and away the strongest gender. I don’t know a single man who’d be able to endure that much pain. Yes, passing a kidney stone is tough—but a kidney stone doesn’t weigh nine pounds. What else do men have to deal with? Pulling out nostril hairs? I don’t think so.
Finally, Darlene’s new son arrived. She named him Jacob. And I have to say, like many new-born babies, he was…well, hideous. As time passed, though, he became much cuter. Mary, Darlene and Jacob eventually moved to Idaho, and after a few years, I lost touch with them. I have googled and Facebooked Darlene in an attempt to find her, but I never have. I do think about them occasionally, and wonder how their lives turned out. I hope Darlene has finally found the peace and happiness she richly deserves, and that Jacob grew into a fine young man. And I sincerely hope he never shows up at my doorstep wanting to know “Are you my father?”
Nope. I’m just the Lamaze coach who used to sell dead fish with your mom. I don’t think Hallmark has a section for that.
A Pregnant Pause, Part Two
So there I was in a Lamaze class with a woman I hardly knew, pregnant with a child that was not my own. We worked on breathing, calming techniques, and even massage therapies. We had extensive discussions about her cervix. We watched startlingly graphic videos of childbirth. I had seen many of these type in high school health class, but when you are holding the hand of someone about to go through this, it suddenly becomes far less abstract. As you can imagine, there were many awkward moments, many about how to address me:
“Here, your husband can turn you over like this—“
“I’m not her husband.”
“Oh. Well, your boyfriend can—“
“I’m not her boyfriend.”
“Well, you are the father, right?”
“No, we don’t know where he is.”
It reached the point where it got far too difficult to explain my presence, so if someone referred to me as boyfriend, husband, or father, we just shrugged and went along with it. The path of least resistance is not to be despised this deep into a pregnancy. I also found something happening that I absolutely did not expect: I really began to enjoy the classes. Even though I couldn’t understand why Darlene trusted me so much, I was glad that she did. The truth was I really enjoyed being needed. I was also impressed by Darlene’s strength. By then, the fetus appeared to be about ten percent of her body weight, and she was clearly uncomfortable most of the time. In spite of this, she never lost her ability to laugh and smile, and not once had a cross word for me (some of the other chaps in the class were far less fortunate with their partners). I was in awe of her.
After we had finished the course, Darlene got a call from her Aunt Mary. Mary had decided that the family boycott of Darlene was absurd and hurtful, and announced she would no longer observe it. Mary told Darlene that she would be there to help her in any way she needed. I liked Mary—she was smart and no nonsense, and Darlene was clearly relieved to have her aunt back. Mary seemed to like me as well, but I don’t think she ever understood why I was bothering to help Darlene. I would sometimes catch Mary gazing at me as if she were trying to suss out my agenda. My only agenda was that I had come to care a great deal about her niece.
Mark and Angie, however, were far less excited about Mary’s presence. They must have perceived her as a threat to the level of control they felt they had over Darlene. One evening, they sat her down and told her that Mary could not be involved in her life—not until the baby was born, and Darlene had moved out. They claimed that Mary gave off “wicked energy”, and were worried about how her presence would affect their baby. Mark also wanted to remind Darlene that she was an “immoral sinner whose only path to redemption was giving them her child.” When Mary found out what they had said to her niece, she made Darlene an offer she couldn’t refuse: keep your baby, move in with me, and I will help you raise it. Mary knew this would lead to her being ostracized from her own family, but to her credit decided she had had enough of intolerance and judgment.
A week later, I was moving Darlene’s stuff out of Mark and Angie’s house. Mark decided he would follow me around and loom over my shoulder. I decided that I would move suddenly and bump into him—a little harder each time. If Mark warned me something was valuable, I made very sure to collide with it. Heading for the door with the last of Darlene’s belongings, Mark called out to me and said, “I’d like you to give Darlene a message. Tell her we are very disappointed, and hope that God will forgive her.”
He just stared at me, daring me to respond. I trembled with rage, and glanced around the room looking for some valuable he warned me about I could kick over. I also contemplated bringing my knee up into his groin. The man I am today would have said something along the lines of “I’d like to give you a message from Charles Darwin. He is not the least bit disappointed to tell you that it’s really good for humanity that you are unable to pass on your hateful and bigoted genes to the next generation.” But I was not yet who I am today, so I went with:
“Go fuck yourself.”
In Darlene’s new room, I unpacked her belongings as she directed me from a rocking chair. When the unpacking was finished, she turned to me and said, “So…my due date is the 14th.”
“Yes, I know. I’ll come by after work.”
She gave me a quizzical look. “You’re not taking the day off?”
The whole day? Why? “Oh. Well, I suppose I could. Do you think you’ll need me?”
She looked at me like I just answered her in Urdu. “You’re my Lamaze coach. I’m going to need you there the whole time.”
Um…what? “You mean in the delivery room? When you give birth?”
She stared at me like I was someone who couldn’t tell you in which year the War of 1812 occurred. “I told you I didn’t want to do this alone.”
Yes, but I didn’t know this is what you meant. “Well,” I said with a desperate whine. “Mary will be in there.”
“Yes, but she didn’t take the class with me. You did.”
To this day, I don’t why that didn’t occur to me. Whether it was because I was nineteen, or thick as a concrete wall, or just in denial, I was honestly surprised by this expectation. One thing was now abundantly clear: I was going to be in the delivery room to help Darlene deliver her baby.
And how did that go? You will discover next time.
A Pregnant Pause
Many of my friends and students for years have told me that I should begin collecting my stories and writing them down. Not my short stories—things that have actually happened to me. After some thought, I decided I would try it, and that I would use this blog as a conduit for doing so. I don’t know where these stories will lead—if they will lead anywhere—but this seems like an idea worth exploring. Please let me know what you think. Here we go…
My first job out of high school was at a southern California theme park that I’ll call “Ocean Experience.” One of the less appealing tasks we were assigned was at the Dolphin and Whale Feeding Pool. Two employees were shoved into a stall that would make a Massachusetts Turnpike toll booth seem “roomy” by comparison. There were two cashier windows, and in between us: a huge bucket filled with dead fish to sell to tourists who wished to feed the cetaceans. It seemed always busy, so the shift would go by very quickly; on the downside, you would end the day smelling like, well, smelt. At least no one wanted to sit next to you on the bus ride home.
I noticed one fall that I seemed to have a rather frequent stall mate. Her name was Darlene. My father would have described her as a “wee thing”—five feet tall, 95 pounds soaking wet. A cute brunette, she was extremely shy, and rarely looked you in the eye when she spoke. Oh, she had one other distinguishing characteristic: she was nearly six months pregnant.
I worked this shift with Darlene at least three times a week. As you can imagine, she got fatigued rather easily, so I made sure she didn’t move any more than she wanted or had to. I would direct the customers to my window when she needed a breather, and every chance I had, I would sneak off to find her ice cream, fudge, or churros to feed her cravings. Eventually, she started to overcome her shyness, and began to tell me The Story.
Her boyfriend Todd promised he’d marry her and help her raise their child, and then the next day climbed into his VW van and was never heard from again. Her religiously conservative family chucked her out and refused to even speak to her. She was no longer welcomed in her church. She was now living with a couple (Mark and Angie) who were going to adopt her child, and they were nice enough, but there was something about them that gave her the creeps, just a little, but they were nice enough, and they’d be good parents. Abandoned by everyone else, I think she needed someone to talk to. Why not the guy you were stuck with in a little booth hawking sushi for dolphins?
Then, about a week later, I finally got a sense of how much she had come to trust me. During a very rare slow period, she turned to me and said: “So…Mark and Angie have enrolled me in a Lamaze class.”
Being nineteen and male, I was very good at not really listening and making the conversation about what I wanted to discuss: “Did you ever see Bill Cosby’s routine about that. It’s so hilarious!” I then began making exaggerated breathing noises, and laughing, blissfully unaware of the fact that while Mr. Cosby was funny, I actually was not.
Darlene sighed heavily, and tried again. “I was thinking…I really don’t want to do it alone.”
“No,” I replied while scooping up some herring. “I wouldn’t think so.”
Bless her, she tried subtlety one last time. “Maybe someone that I work with. You know, who has his own car.”
“Yes, that would make the most sense.”
I realized after a moment that Darlene had said nothing else. When I looked over at her, I jumped—I had never seen such a furious glare. I peered over my shoulder, wondering who it was she might have been looking at with such anger. What’s going on?
Realizing I was not, as they used to say “picking up what she was laying down,” she finally resorted to the direct approach. “Would you take the class with me?”
Oh. You want me to do it? Wow, didn’t see that coming. Without giving it any real thought, I shrugged, and said “okay.” It was only later that I would realize the consequences of that answer.
And you will discover just what those consequences were next time.
A Loss for Words
Sorry I have been away for a while.
I had plans to update this blog between Christmas and New Year’s, and try to return to my monthly (or semi-monthly) schedule. In spite of the fact that Allison, our eldest dog, needed an operation on Christmas Eve, my wife Valerie and I were both looking forward to a relaxing vacation together. After Val left teaching last year, we have had very little joint time off, and our disparate work schedules only allow us to spend a total of 4-6 hours together Monday through Thursday. Thus, to say that we were looking forward to the pause would be like saying Rita Hayworth had “pleasant features”–something of a understatement.
So there we were on December 26th (Boxing Day to those of you in the current/former bits of the UK). We had just watched Terence Malik’s “The Tree of Life”–an impressionistic and challenging film about making sense of death in a world that might lack existential meaning. The film had ended, and Valerie and I were discussing it, trying to make sense of it, to decide if we actually liked it. Before we could finish our conversation, the phone rang. I noticed on the caller ID that it was Val’s mother. We both found it odd that she would call at 9:45 at night. After Val picked up the phone, the meaning fo the call became clear: it was not Val’s mother, it was her Aunt calling to say that Val’s mother Ruth had passed away that evening.
As if often the case when one loses someone close, our lives became consumed with her death. There is, of course, an exhausting amount of emotional duress and grief, but what makes so much of it frustrating is life’s insistence that it move forward, in spite of the fact that you feel like a huge tear has been ripped into your soul. How can everything just go on? Doesn’t everyone realize that Ruth Heck just died? Why hasn’t the world stopped to acknowledge that fact?
The truth of it is, the world does not stop when someone dies. Even when Gandhi was assassinated, and much of India and other parts of the world ground to a halt, most of the world continued on. And we know deep in our bones that it must–that’s cold comfort, though, when we are grieving.
So the world marches on, and we must learn to march with it. The vacation ended, and we did not get to have our joyous, relaxing week. We returned to work exhausted, still managing our grief, splitting our energy between our jobs and the seemingly endless tasks one must perform when someone dies. The constant email and phone communication with the lawyer. More phone calls to banks, insurance companies, tedious visits to the DMV. The sort of difficult and trying tasks that call for focus and undivided attention, right when we are at a moment in our lives when we can muster neither.
The other night, Valerie asked me what I missed about Ruth. I thought for a moment, and mentioned a few of the things most people who knew Ruth would miss: her kind heart, her devilish sense of humor, her smiling eyes. I think the thing I will miss most, though, is how much she meant to Val. She was a huge part of her life. They had contact every day, and while Ruth sometimes drove Val crazy (as parents are wont to do), there was no denying the love they had for each other. The daily joy and comfort Ruth brought Val is really the thing I will miss the most.
If I have one regret–outside of the obvious fact that Ruth is no longer here–it’s that I wish I was able to tell Ruth how grateful I am for her daughter. How happy I am that she brought Valerie into the world so I could share everything with her. That I will spend the rest of my life finding ways to tell and show Val how much I love her. That the “furthest star is too close, compared to the time I need. ” (John Trudell).
That Valerie will always be the most important branch on my Tree of Life.
Postscript: If you haven’t seen it yet, here is a link to Ruth’s obituary from the Davis (CA) Enterprise. It gives some insight into how remarkable a woman she was.
A Novel Solution
It seemed like this was going to be the year.
In February, I had been signed by a manager, and was in negotiations to have my screenplay optioned. During the week-long vacation from school, I holed away for a couple of days in a Catholic retreat center called Enders Island. I was working on script revisions while my new manager negotiated the deal with the director who wanted my screenplay. Unfortunately, that deal fell apart. I was heartened by the fact that my new manager had saved me from a bad deal, and the fact that another producer stepped forward in March. He called and we had a nice conversation, and he expressed great enthusiasm for my script. He also said he would be sending me an option agreement within the next few days.
He never did, and in spite of the fact that over the next few months I would get phone calls and emails from him telling me he was “about ready to make an offer,” he never actually came through. I put up with his shenanigans probably far longer than I should have, because he seemed to have a real passion for the script, and frankly, I had no other suitors. Finally, in July, I ran out of patience with him when he left me a message saying he was going to a couple of meetings with producers to discuss my script. I called him back and told him if he wanted to do that, that we would need an option agreement in place, and then he was free to do that as much as he wanted. My next piece of communication from him said “there was just no interest in my screenplay” so he was going to move on. Again, it was disappointing, but it’s also clear he’s a bit of a fly by night. I never understood why he wanted to shop my script without an option agreement–the agreement puts him on the hook for one entire dollar, and gives him exclusive rights to shop it for six months. At the end of the six months, he can drop the option, and owes me nothing more. The only thing I can figure is he didn’t want to negotiate with my manager, who proved very clearly she didn’t come to represent Oscar winners by suffering fools gladly.
It was around that time that I finished second at Visionfest, and in spite of these set backs, still felt optimistic about my screenplay and other projects I was working on. However, the entire experience with the Bridge contest and the fact that the revised version of my script failed to place in the Nicholl competition did begin to deflate me. It seemed I was heading in the opposite direction I thought I would be in this year, and it was starting to grate. I realized that the changes I had made to the script–following the notes of the director who never hired me–had taken the story away from where it should have been. In short, I had made it worse. So, I went back to where it was a year ago and rewrote it from that copy, and deleted everything else I had done since then. As a result, I feel much better about it then I did this summer. As if to affirm my new faith, I was soon contacted by a Boston-based director with a Kurdish wife who was very interested in the screenplay (if you don’t know, it takes place in Boston, and the protagonist is Kurdish refugee from an honor killing). I’m not sure if I believe in signs or not, but this seemed like if this was a sign, it was one I shouldn’t ignore. So, I sent him the script.
And I haven’t heard back from him. Nor did he respond to my follow-up email last week.
So what now? Well, this is when I started thinking about the words of the great Randy Pausch, he of the Last Lecture. He has a theory about walls–walls let us know how badly we want things. They also keep the people who don’t really want things out of your way. So I started thinking that if this is a wall, how might I get around it? So, I have made a decision. If, by the time my contract expires with my manager in February, and there are no new deals on the horizon, I am going to take my screenplay and adapt it back into a novel. Some of you may recall that it started life during National Novel Writing Month a few years ago. Maybe what I am being told is that it needs to go back. I still believe in the story, and still think it needs to get out there, but maybe it’s not supposed to be a movie. So that is my new plan.
Intimidating? Yes, but I was heartened by the words of the brilliant Dave Eggers whom I saw at the Connecticut Forum a couple of weeks ago. Eggers mentioned that there is a page from Amy Tan’s “The Bonesetter’s Daughter” on the wall in one of his tutoring centers. It’s designed to remind the students that even the people who are the very best at this craft have to work very hard at it to be successful. And Ms. Tan is clearly not afraid of walls:
The page is from her 26th draft.
Motivating Factors, Part Two
I know it has taken me a little while to get to this–and it’s not because I lack motivation to finish this topic. 🙂
I mentioned that at the end of the first post that what motivated me the most at work was relationships. Relationships, I think, are key to much of what we pursue in life. Why do we take time to try to be attractive to others? We are looking for their attention–we want love, we want sex, we want something that won’t happen without them noticing who we are, followed by some level of communication. Why do we follow sports teams, or musical acts, or other celebrities? We feel connected to them in some way–even when we have never met them, and really don’t know them at all. It’s the same reason we get caught up in the lives of fictional characters: we imagine a connection with them, and want that relationship to come to some sort of fruition (triumph for the hero, defeat the villain). It’s part of what motivates me to write this blog, and to write screenplays–at some point, a human being will connect with my writing, and have an experience. Although I may never have direct interaction with my readers (or viewers), that desire for connection is still part of my motivation.
Teaching, of course, is different from writing a blog or deciding I know Casey Anthony better than a jury that spent weeks in the same room with her. Teaching doesn’t happen without relationships. You can’t really be an island if you are a teacher. Even if you don’t interact with your colleagues much, you still must interact with your students. Ineffective teachers, I think have decided that they don’t really want any relationship with their students. It’s okay if you don’t want a relationship with a colleague–even in a small school like mine, you can mostly avoid any unnecessary interactions. It’s also fine if you don’t want to have a relationship with your neighbors–stay out of their business, they are mostly going to stay out of yours (especially here in stolid New England). Don’t want to be in a relationship with your significant other? Take steps to end it. That’s more complicated, of course, but still within your power. You’re a teacher, and you don’t want a relationship with your students? If you don’t quit your job, you have a serious problem. Your students are coming back tomorrow–and if they realize you have no interest, or you don’t like them, or worse, you don’t care–well, get ready for a thoroughly miserable experience for all concerned.
My wife Valerie brought up in her comment to my first post the issue of toxicity. It’s a valid point. What if you like your kids, and they like you, but you are struggling with motivation because of all of the other pressures you have–test score politics, ever-changing state/federal/accreditation requirements (many of which are contradictory), helicopter parenting, and less than stellar school leadership? What if all of these factors suck your energy and your desire to have any sort of relationships in your school? What, then?
To answer that, I want to first consider an example of what schools should look like: American Canyon High School in Napa, California (and don’t think just because it’s in Napa, it’s really flush with cash. That’s not how California funds its schools.) The principal, Mark Brewer, sums up his school’s credo: “Motivating kids to learn means building relationships with them.” The school is divided up into four learning centers that allow students and teachers to develop relationships over time–what Brewer calls “communities within communities–where it’s easier for administrators, teachers, and students to forge relationships.” It’s also not a one size fits all model–in addition to college prep and AP courses, there are vocational programs from culinary arts, auto shop, and nursing, to name a few. He also has this crazy idea that the teachers work together in the “communities” to plan lessons, set goals, and develop curriculum. Brewer has argued that his school model reflects what should be the priorities of education.
I know many of my colleagues are probably reading the above paragraph, and thinking “my school does something similar, and I (or one of my colleagues) still struggle with motivation.” I don’t doubt that’s true. I think the difference is leadership. Too many schools have leaders that lack the proper perspective. They have decided that, in essence, relationships are not important. They make no effort to cultivate a relationship with the individuals who staff their buildings. They treat them with disrespect, make knee jerk decisions, and lash out at anyone who offers an alternative. This is because there is tremendous pressure on schools and school districts to perform. The consequence is that relationships are being sacrificed at the altar of “results.” A media culture that celebrates such “toxic avengers” like Michelle Rhee as smart, tough, pragmatists (Ms. Rhee actually has all but three of those qualities) does not help. It creates a dysfunctional model–one that people like Mark Brewer are trying to resist.
I have often said that as long as I could keep the other distractions out of my classroom, I can continue to stay motivated to do my job. So far, I have been successful, but that may not last forever. The only way to avoid is for the Mark Brewers of the world to get the upper hand over the Michelle Rhees and the Arne Duncans. I wish I could say I was optimistic that will happen. Nonetheless, I’m going to keep rolling that stone up the hill for as long as I can.
Fatherless on Father’s Day
I know I said in my last post I would write part two of Motivating Factors. I still plan on doing that, but yesterday being Father’s Day got me thinking about my own father, so I decided I wanted to write about that instead. I’ll post the sequel to Motivating Factors later this week.
My father passed away in 2003, just a few weeks before his 68th birthday. It doesn’t seem that long ago, yet I find myself recently thinking about all of the things that have happened to Valerie and I since he died. My pursuit of screenwriting. My district Teacher of the Year Award. Our trip to Italy in 2006, and our trip to Scotland (including a stay at Brodie Castle) in 2009. Valerie and I buying a house together. A lot can happen in eight years, and I often find it painful when I realize that I can’t share some of these things with him.
When I think about being a writer and a teacher, it’s difficult for me to imagine that either of those things would have happened without his influence upon me. I grew up in a house surrounded by books. We had more books than we had room, so books didn’t just fill up our cheap aluminum book cases (covered with a wood colored veneer–very classy!)–virtually every cabinet, closet, bed stand, and any other conceivable nook and cranny contained books. Most of them were hardcover, and were purchased by my father. One of the very first books I read cover to cover was Henry Williamson’s “Tarka the Otter”–which I mistook for a children’s book. And even though it was not “Rikki Tikki Tavi” (my favorite children’s book, also in my father’s collection), I found I could not put it down. I could see Tarka as clearly as I could see anything, as Williamson’s irresistible prose opened up a whole side of my imagination I didn’t know I had.
When I reached the end of the book only to discover that Tarka had been killed by hunters, I wept for probably an hour. Then I was angry. I was angry at Williamson for killing off his protagonist, and I was angry at my father for having such a dreadful book. My father worked late at night, and was napping that afternoon, but it didn’t stop me from charging into my parents’ bedroom and rousing him from his slumber. He had some explaining to do.
To his credit, he didn’t lash out in anger when he realized all that had upset me was a novel about an otter. Looking back on it all these years later, his affect seemed to suggest that it struck him as completely reasonable that I would warrant an explanation right then, his sleeping be damned. So he pulled me up onto the bed and calmly explained to me why it was that Tarka had to meet his demise at the end of the book. To be honest, I don’t remember what he said to me. I remember the smell of his musk, and the gentleness of his voice, and feeling much better after he spoke–so much so that when I left, the book in my hand was no longer an object of scorn, but appeared instead to be magical treasure. I didn’t return it to the shelf–I kept it in the drawer in my nightstand. I would come back to that book for the next several years–flipping through it, rereading passages, sometimes just enjoying the feel of it in my hands.
The thing is, my father helped me understand what great writing was–to hook an audience, to make that audience feel deep emotion for people (and other creatures) that didn’t even exist, to create a world that audience just could not shake. Even though I didn’t understand that at the time, he certainly did. Perhaps that’s why he took me seriously. He could have easily told me to leave him alone because he was sleeping, or to stop being so silly–it was just a book , after all. But he knew better than that. He knew what writing could do. And that’s what I think he tried to convey to me.
After that, what I wanted more than anything was to make someone else feel so deeply for a character as Williamson had made me feel for Tarka. I couldn’t imagine what joy that would be, but I knew it was something I wanted to feel. Every time I sit down to write, I think about Tarka and I think about my father, and suddenly I believe anything is possible.
The last time we spoke was around Thanksgiving in 2002. I had just published my first poem in a major magazine, and one of the last things he said before hanging up was that he was proud of me for writing it. I thanked him, of course– but I really wish I had thanked him for what he said to me all those years before. Neither of us realized it then, but that was the day he taught me I could be a writer.
Happy Father’s Day.
Motivating Factors
“We are not supposed to be perfect. We are supposed to be useful.” — Leonard Peltier
A few weeks ago, a senior in my philosophy class–let’s call him Andy– asked me, “How do you stay motivated?”
I don’t think he was interested in what kept me going, per se. I think he wanted to know how anyone had motivation, and if there was perhaps some magic elixir I could share with him. I remember thinking at the the time that when we are young we are far more willing to look at the world thus: if I could just find that one answer I’m looking for, everything will fall into place. If I could just get my car, if I could just get that girl to notice me, if I could just get my diploma, then it’s all going to be o.k.
Come to think of it, we keep doing that as adults, don’t we? I think this is why his question has stuck with me so. What keeps me motivated, and why does Andy struggle with it? What keeps our current class valedictorian so motivated that she’ll do extra credit for me if her grade slips down to a 98? Conversely, what keeps one of my colleagues–let’s call her Andrea–from being motivated? Andrea uses all of her sick days up by February vacation and seems perpetually resentful of the presence of her students.
I wonder if Andrea thinks if she can just make it to Friday, or the end of the school year, or to retirement, then everything will be o.k.. The problem is that most of her day is filled with events and interactions that make those goals seem so far away. Maybe that’s why she’s so unmotivated. She has a goal, but it doesn’t get her what she needs, and she has to wait so long to get it.
This strikes me as ironic, because every motivational speaker–whether they be self-help gurus, retired professional athletes, or pseudoscientific charlatans (or all of the above!)–will tell you that the key to motivation is to set realistic goals and work towards them. I won’t dispute this, but it seems to me those goals also have to be meaningful–that the process of obtaining them must be just as valuable, if not more, than the goal itself. For Andrea, there is nothing meaningful that happens between her showing up at work and her next day off.
I think the same may be true of Andy. He wants to graduate high school, but he can’t get motivated enough to do what he needs to do to finish, perhaps because there is no meaning in it for him. This wouldn’t shock me–Andy might be the smartest kid I have ever taught. He is likely bored by high school. Of course, if we are bored and uninterested in what we are doing, it becomes virtually impossible to derive any meaning from it.
I tried to answer Andy as honestly as I could. He’s here to get his diploma. If that is the single most meaningful thing in his life right now, he could do it–and in his case, with very little effort. However, if he is encumbered by the fact that a lot of what he is being asked to do is purposeless–well, he’s right. It’s high school. A lot of it is stupid. A lot of it is pointless. A lot of it will be so unimportant in a few years, it will disappear down the memory hole, never to resurface again. As I frequently tell my students: if you ever meet someone my age who says high school was the best time of his life, run like hell away from him, because his life sucks in ways you couldn’t possibly imagine.
So I asked Andy what he ultimately wanted–to walk in graduation with his fellow seniors? To walk away early to adult ed or a GED test? To stay at home until his parents died and it becomes his? He confessed that he was afraid of those choices, because he didn’t want to be a quitter (I think he actually meant being judged a quitter by his parents, but that’s just my supposition). I told him there was no shame in quitting something he found meaningless. Ultimately, though, he was going to have to figure that out on his own.
He thanked me for the advice, and he left me hoping I had been of some use to him. Then I started thinking about what kept me motivated at a sometimes thankless job that despite some common misconceptions, doesn’t pay very much and eats up a great deal of energy. And though I will be the first to admit that I am happy on Friday afternoons, and relieved at the end of the school year, those are rarely at the forefront of my mind. Indeed, I am sometimes asked how many days are left in the school year, and I take it as a good sign that I rarely know.
So what does motivate me? Relationships. The relationships with my students, with my colleagues, with the materials and ideas I teach. I find meaning in all of these. Indeed, I would argue that relationships are the single most important factor in a successful classroom and school.
In fact, I will argue that extensively in my next post.
Danger Is My Business 